Cycle canceled

My heart sinks when I type that my cycle was canceled.  I had prepared myself all day and told myself that my cycle would be canceled.  We waited an hour to see the Doctor all while my cycle buddies were being wheeled out in wheel chairs after their egg retrievals.  I wanted to make it to egg retrieval so bad,  I never thought that a low E2 of all things would be what held us back.  I held it together pretty well in the office but broke down and cried on my way home.  J and I drove home separately.  I hate that my poor husband has to go through this, I sat in my car and cried once I parked in our garage at the thought of facing him.  He was so nice as to hide all of the medicines before I got home and greeted me a few minutes later with a glass of wine...I had three.

Let me say that we interviewed three RE's before deciding on Dr. A.  We chose him because his entire staff is said to be accessible by email including him.  We liked that he had a reputation of being sensitive and caring and his success rates were great.  ALL of this came back to bite us in the ass.  The man is so nice that it seems he won't give a straight, honest answer.  His staff doesn't always respond to email and I sat on hold 10 minutes the other day before hanging up after an email went unanswered.  One of the nurses had emailed me to tell me that my E2 level was 137.  I sent an email back saying "What does this mean?"  Wouldn't it make sense to tell me what this means?  What am I supposed  to do with the number?  I'm not a Doctor or a Nurse, I turn to Google. I never got a response back.

Our experience at the Doctor yesterday was less than stellar and I believe we are going to be looking for another RE for a May cycle. The Doctor assumed we wanted to retrieve.  He walked in the exam room and asked me if I was ready for a retrieval this weekend.  "Even with low E2 like I have?" I said.  So we took a look and my follicles had grown but everything I researched told me to cancel.  Dr. A wanted to just go in and see if there were any eggs even though the blood results said no.  If we moved forward to egg retrieval we would lose all of our money ($9000.00) if we backed out now and tried a new cycle we would only lose $300 plus the cost of meds.  The answer seemed obvious, to us anyway not so much for the Dr.  He just couldn't give us any clear information, clear decisions.

Thank goodness for Google.  I researched and researched the day before and found out that my E2 should be around 5000.  Such a low E2 meant that I most likely had no eggs in any follicles.  Most Dr.'s advise to cancel with numbers as low as mine but Dr. A wanted to just see what we get for a whopping $9000.00!  With the odds stacked against us, we just knew in our hearts that we had to cancel.  What upsets me is that our Dr. didn't give us the advice to cancel, we had educated ourselves on this E2 thing and after leaving the exam room we went to see the financial coordinator and she said "If it were me, I wouldn't go through with it, the odds aren't there".  Finally, someone told us what to do-too bad it wasn't our Doctor.  I am just in disbelief that our Doctor didn't understand where we were coming from.  When J brought up money versus our chances at this point in the game our Dr. actually said "you just opened my eyes to all of this"  WHAT?  You mean to tell me Dr. that you have never considered that maybe your patients might be better off to cut their losses and walk away because of odds and money?  I knew we were out of there.  Such a nice man, but I need a Doctor that is going to tell ME (the patient) what to do.

My husband actually said later "Today's appointment was worse than I expected."  I said "Why is that?"  and he said "Because Dr. A didn't give us an answer, he didn't understand where we were coming from."  I agreed.

So, we are now researching the different RE's in the St. Louis area AGAIN.  Trying to do so quickly before May.  We have to look at their success rates and ask them if they have any experience with low E2.  I can't believe we are here again.